Service providers want the technological flexibility, business agility and savings that Network Function Virtualization (NFV) promises, but they´re frustrated by its implementation complexity and cost and the fact that it requires additional work on top of all their other projects and initiatives, the company said.
A new market brief from iconectiv®, NFV information as a service making virtualization practical, simple and telco-grade, explores the top four reasons why those roadblocks exist (particularly around the onboarding of Virtual Network Functions (VNF) and Cloud Native Functions (CNF) and identifies how service providers can overcome them to begin leveraging all of NFV´s benefits.
Some analysts describe NFV as “The Wild West.” The brief explains why that´s the case–and how ETSI, GSMA and MEF standards activities should be harmonized with open source initiatives such as Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP) and Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV). One example of recent activity to address onboarding is the formation of the Common NFVI Telco Task Force (CNTT) to address variances and onboarding-related testing and certification.
The iconectiv market brief identifies a solution for overcoming these roadblocks, which includes a tool for low-touch automated VNF onboarding and verification. This tool would minimize lead time and expense and maximizes business agility.
The certification of standards activities with open source initiatives also is key. Service providers need a neutral third party to verify that the cloud stack components (VNF, NFVI, orchestration layers) all function as designed and follow industry standards. Service providers are converging on the importance of certified VNFs against reference implementations of NFVI to benchmark the VNFs. The existence of neutral, third-party labs lowers the barrier of entry for smaller VNF vendors and fosters innovation in the market.
iconectiv´s extensive experience in information services helps your business and your customers access and exchange information simply, seamlessly and securely. For more information, visit www.iconectiv.com.
